Week in Photos

Hot air balloons wowed thousands of visitors to the New Jersey Festival of Ballooning in Readington, one of the country’s largest hot air balloon events.

ZUMAPRESS.com

The mangled wreckage of a school bus is seen following a collision with a train in Kotmehatab, India. Four schoolchildren were killed and 11 injured.

AFP/Getty Images

A rebel fighter uses a hole in a wall as he aims his rifle in Aleppo. Syrian forces and rebels clashed violently Monday before dawn as the battle for control of the northern city raged into a third day.

AFP/Getty Images

Two women pose during the Carnaval des Fleurs (Carnival of Flowers) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The three-day festival began Sunday with a parade, concerts and street dancing.

AP

A Chinese girl looks up to the sky as she holds an umbrella beside a water fountain during heavy rain in Beijing.

EPA

People walk on the beach of Kampen on the German North Sea island of Sylt in northern Germany.

AFP/Getty Images

Girls practice during a ballet class at a dancing school in Haikou, China.

AP

A man cools down in a fountain during a hot day in Minsk, Belarus.

Reuters

A Kashmiri vegetable vendor takes a nap in his boat at Dal Lake in Srinagar.

Reuters

Houses submerged by flood waters are seen in Anju City on the west coast of North Korea. At least 88 people have been killed and more than 63,000 were left homeless in North Korea after a week of torrential rains.

EPA

A man collects recyclable materials from debris in the waters of Manila Bay after tropical storm Saola hit the Philippines.

Reuters

A Hindu devotee takes a bath in the Bagmati River for Shravan festivities before heading to the Pashupatinath Temple to offer prayers to Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

AFP/Getty Images

People throw colored powder into the air during the Holi Festival in Berlin, Germany. The original Holi, also known as the festival of colors, is celebrated in India and other Hindu countries.

AP

A motorist, right, who got out of her car argues with a demonstrator as civil servants — which included transport workers, police and firemen — out of uniform blocked traffic during a protest against government cuts, in Madrid. Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has been introducing successive rounds of austerity measures aimed at preventing the country from being forced into a public finance bailout.

AP

The wreck of a minibus is seen in Bratoszewice near Lodz, Poland. Eight people were killed and two injured when a train hit the minibus.

Reuters

Employee Tilly Shiner looks at a book in the aMAZEme labyrinth at The Southbank Centre in London. Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo used 250,000 books to create the maze which will be on display until August 25.

Getty Images

Young women jump among sunflowers during the Sunflower Festival in Zama, Japan. More than half a million sunflowers will attract visitors until the middle of August at some venues in the city.

AFP/Getty Images

Residents of the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya look among the debris of their homes after an accidental fire. The Dadaab camp is the largest refugee complex in the world where thousands of Somalis fleeing conflict and starvation have found shelter and are helped by aid agencies.

AFP/Getty Images

Paramilitary policemen attend a training session in Hefei, China.

Feature China/Barcroft Media

Traffic comes to a stop at the Delhi-Gurgaon road on the outskirts of New Delhi, India. India’s energy crisis cascaded over half the country when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without power in one of the world’s largest-ever blackouts.

Penn State University football fans greet players during the “Rise and Rally” event as they make their way to a preseason workout in State College, Pa.

Reuters

A Pakistani man sweeps the ground in front of his restaurant during a sudden monsoon in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

AP

A combination of pictures shows supporters during the London 2012 Olympic Games.

AFP/Getty Images

Rescuers help a resident cross a swollen river after heavy rains caused a mudslide in Jinggu, southwestern China’s Yunnan province.

AFP/Getty Images

An Indian consumer looks at ‘rakhi’ (sacred thread) on the eve of the Hindu festival Raksha Bandhan. The annual festival commemorates the abiding ties between siblings of opposite sex, and is marked by a simple ceremony in which a woman ties a rakhi around the wrist of her brother.

AFP/Getty Images

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gives a mosquito net designed for malaria prevention to a local woman during a tour of the Philippe Senghor Health Center in Dakar, Senegal.

Reuters

Members of Greece’s extreme right party hand out milk at Athens’ main Syntagma Square opposite parliament.

Somali police carry a soldier in Mogadishu who was injured durign a shootout with two suicide bombers, who were trying to blow up the constituent assembly venue.

AP

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and Christine Assange, mother of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, look down from the balcony of Government Palace in Quito, Ecuador.

EPA

Plane spotters watch the landing of an Airbus A380 of the ‘Emirates’ airline at the Schiphol International airport in the Netherlands.

EPA

Residents ride on makeshift rafts during a heavy downpour along a flooded street in Malabon, Manila.

Reuters

A Syrian vendor stands at his candy and nuts shop in Damascus.

EPA

London Mayor Boris Johnson gets stuck on a zip-line during “BT London Live” in London’s Victoria Park.

Barcroft Media

This combination photo shows the women’s doubles pair of (clockwise from top left) China’s Wang Xiaoli and Yang Yu; South Korea’s Jung Kyung Eun (top) and Kim Ha Na; Indonesia’s Greysia Polii and Meiliana Jauhari and South Korea’s Ha Jung-eun (left); and Kim Min-jung. The eight players were kicked out of the Olympic for attempting to “throw” matches.

Reuters

Beachgoers admire a double rainbow that appeared over Hilton Head Island’s South Forest Beach after early evening’s rains.

AP

Multiple bolts of lightning streak to the ground as a severe thunderstorm moves through eastern Henderson County, Ky. The same storm system ripped through Southwestern Indiana, injuring at least four people and causing extensive damage.

AP

Spanish acrobat David Pereira is silhouetted as he performs on the roof of a hotel during a photo call in Berlin, Germany.

AP Photo

A man holding a pole to stay on the mound of garbage washed ashore by big waves as others look for recyclable materials along Roxas Blvd. in Manila, Philippines. The slow-moving Typhoon Saola killed at least 12 people and displaced 154,000 in the Philippines.

AP Photo

Smoke billows from an office building following an explosion there yesterday in Nanjiang, China.

ZUMA Press

Artists paint a map of Berlin on the German capital’s Schlossplatz. The giant map is scheduled to be finished in mid-August as part of the celebration of Berlin’s 775th anniversary.

AFP/Getty Images

A car tries to navigate a flooded road in Ilan County, Taiwan. Typhoon Saola brought heavy rains around Taiwan, forcing most of the island’s schools and offices to close Thursday.

ZUMA Press

Frances Hartog, the senior conservator from the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, inspects an embroidered dress that’s part of the “200 Years of Wedding Fashion” exhibit at the Singapore’s national museum.

AP

A decorated elephant parades with traditional dancers amid the annual Buddhist festival of the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

AP

The English National Ballet troupe performs before the women’s individual all-around artistic gymnastics competition at the Olympics in London.

AP

Firefighters battle a car fire after riots broke out near a luxury hotel in Cairo, Egypt. A security official said one person was killed when Egyptian police opened fire on a mob trying to storm a Nile-side luxury hotel.

AP

Children use plywood to surf the flooded streets of Navotas, Manila, after heavy rains and strong winds were brought about by Typhoon Saola.

AFP/Getty Images

Spanish King Juan Carlos stumbles during a visit to the Spanish Armed Forces Staff headquarters in Madrid. He was OK and continued his visit as planned.

EPA

Rescuers help a woman from flood water in Ambon, Indonesia. At least 11 were killed after floods and landslides swept the provincal capital.

EPA

A protester strolls the streets during Emancipation Day celebrations in Port of Spain. The celebrations are held annually in Trinidad and Tobago to recognize the freedom of people of African descent from slavery.

Reuters

Firefighters work the Salt Creek Fire, near Interstate 5 and Gilman Road in Shasta County, Calif.

AP Photo

North Korean residents standing next to a road as flood waters pour into a caved-in area in Songchon county, South Pyongan Province. Recent torrential rain and a typhoon in North Korea have killed 119 people, made more than 84,000 homeless and destroyed some 46,000 hectares of crops.

Reuters

A beached air boat is seen, as bathers walk in the nearly dry Platte River near Yutan, Neb. The latest US Drought Monitor survey shows an increase in extreme drought conditions in four Plains states but a slight decrease in the overall area of the lower 48 states experiencing some form of drought.

AP Photo

Gold medal winner Gabby Douglas holds a Kelloggs Corn Flakes box featuring herself. Douglas will be featured on special-edition boxes of the cereal, which goes on sale in the fall.

Getty Images

A costumed woman performs during the King and Queen Competition and Show of the 45th Toronto Caribbean Carnival in Toronto, Canada.

ZUMAPRESS.com

A sparrow braves an Indian Air Force honor guard standing at attention for a review by visiting Myanmar Army commander at the Defense Ministry in New Delhi, India.

AP Photo

Thick fog descends upon the windjammer Angelique during a cruise in Penobscot Bay, Maine.

AP Photo

A man bathes in a river at dawn in the Darien province on the border with Colombia, in Union Choco, Panama. Panamanian authorities began noticing five years ago that the Darien Gap, the only interruption in the Pan-American Highway, was being used by migrant smugglers, usually to move people from Asia and Africa.

AP Photo

Lita Velasquez feeds cats in the central park of Lima’s upscale seaside Miraflores district, in Peru. About 120 felines populate the park. Some of the cats descended from a pair municipal authorities introduced in the late 1990’s to control a rat infestation.

AP Photo

Pussy Riot members, from left, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alekhina sit in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow, Russia. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Thursday criticized the feminist punk rockers facing trial for performing a “punk prayer” against him at Moscow’s main cathedral, but said that a punishment for them shouldn’t be too severe.

AP Photo

A man lies on a waterfall along the river Pliva at a village near Jajce, about 87 miles northwest from the capital of Sarajevo.

REUTERS

An aerial view shows illegal deforestation close to the Amazonia National Park in Itaituba, state of Para. In the 19 months since Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff took office, longstanding rules that curtail deforestation and protect millions of square kilometers of watershed have been rolled back. She issued an executive order to shrink or repurpose seven protected woodlands, making way for hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure projects, and to legalize settlements by farmers and miners.

REUTERS

Aircraft assist in fighting the Salt Creek Fire in Shasta County, Calif. More than 300 firefighters battled a wildfire that threatens about 100 homes and other structures in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Northern California.

AP Photo

Visitors run away as they avoid waves whipped up by winds near Qiantang River in Hangzhou, China. Gales and rainstorms lashed coastal regions in east China when two typhoons made landfall in less than 10 hours from Thursday to Friday morning, forcing over 300,000 people to evacuate.

REUTERS

An Indian model displays a creation by Ritu Beri during the Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, India.

AP Photo

Children rest on a cot against a backdrop of farmers working at a paddy field on the outskirts of Jammu. India is the world’s second-biggest producer of rice, wheat, sugar and cotton and also one of the largest consumers, with a population of about 1.2 billion.

REUTERS

A Femen movement protester is detained by police officers during a naked protest in London. Two topless women painted with the slogans “Olympic shame” and “No Sharia” protested in front of London’s City Hall to draw attention to what they called “bloody Islamist regimes” taking part in the Olympics.

REUTERS

A young Free Syrian Army fighter rests on a school bench in a street in downtown Aleppo. Behind him the graffiti reads “Ihsan Sadiq fighting group, Amr bin al-Aas brigade of the Free North.”

REUTERS

US Navy Blue Angels pilots Lt. C.J. Simonsen (5) and Lt. David Tickle (6) fly in formation with Team Oracle stunt pilot Sean D. Tucker, over Lake Washington, in Seattle. Tucker and the Blue Angels are in town for the annual Seafair summer festival, which will feature an air show and other events this coming weekend.

AP Photo

A woman sunbathes by the waters edge at a private beach in Lido di Ostia near Rome during a strike action entitled ” We close the beach umbrellas ” against a new European Union directive that could force many to shut down. Thousands of Italy’s private beaches kept their parasols closed in peak summer season in a symbolic protest against a new European Union directive that could force many to shut down.

AFP/Getty Images

British policemen haul off a topless activist of Ukraine’s prominent feminist rights group FEMEN who was protesting near London’s Tower Bridge.